I Spoke Too Soon

DAP had been making progress, but this week was not a good week. In class he has been fine behavior-wise. He continues to struggle getting his work done, but besides that, he's pretty respectful in class and when he isn't we deal with it and he quickly becomes respectful.


Well, this week has been a different story. In class he has been OK, but on the playground he has fallen apart. It all started on Tuesday when the yard supervisor told me at lineup that he and one of my mutes (that's right, I have more than one) had been sent to the office for hitting, each other. Our principal/assistant principal have done a pretty good job taking on the behavior during recess time so the classroom teachers don't have to deal with it when it's severe. We have a lot of playground issues at our school and it was taking up a lot of our time; time away from teaching our classes. So DAP and my mute (let's call him CJ) were sent to the office and I was notified about it. They spent part of the afternoon in the office working with the AP and the psychologist (who happens to work with both students) trying to get to the bottom of it since fighting is a suspendable offense. It turns out that they were "play" fighting and it got out of hand. They were told to write letters of apology to each other and then to apologize verbally. The AP and psych had to turn their heads so CJ would apologize quietly, and he did. Things seemed fine and they came back to the class.


On Wednesday, I was out with Mr. Show doing a training, so I had a substitute in my room. That afternoon when I went to the classroom to cleanup and prep for the next day, there was a note from my sub stating that DAP and CJ were, once again, sent to the office for fighting. Great! Apparently, both boys were happy to see the AP and when she asked DAP what had happened, he smiled and said, "I think CJ's going to talk to you today." Hmmm?


Again, Mr. Show and I were out of classroom at a training on Thursday, and I had the same sub in my room. I read the sub's notes at the end of the day and saw that DAP was sent to the office at recess for hitting another student, and then sent home on a 2-day suspension. Later it was noted that the AP took CJ out of class at the end of the day today and, he didn't return. I met with my AP at that time to hear about what happened. As it turns out, DAP punched another one of my students (the child of a colleague of mine) in the back today, yah, that's right! So he was suspended for two-days. The kicker on this one is that when the AP called his mother, she was mad that Thursday didn't count as a suspended day since she had to take Thursday off too to pick him up. Yah, that's what she was mad at!


The AP then flipped over DAP's file and got to CJ's file. He was sent to the office for also hitting another student, a different one thank goodness, and suspended for two days as well.


With some kids, it always seems to be something.